21 Pentecost, Cp23, October 13, 2013
2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c
Ps.66:1-11
2 Tim. 2:8-15 Luke
17:11-19
Today I would like
for us to consider how differences amongst people have been the occasion for
great human failure.
I say this because
the fearful ways in which we often experience differences, lead us to practice
victimization. Victimization creates
oppression and oppression is not just an external force, it is also an attitude
that we can take on ourselves and use against ourselves. The forces of victimization are quite
damaging. Habits of victimization can
even get embedded in our institutional and cultural life in blatant or subtle
forms of discrimination.
We know that
victimization can start early on the playground when children make fun of the
way someone looks, their size or how they are dressed. It can be
institutionalized in slavery and sexism and many other cultural forms of
discrimination. We know that it can
become institutionalized even in religious practices. History reveals many examples where religious
laws and practices reinforced and solidified discriminatory practices.
During the time of
Jesus and during the period of the early church there were questions that were
being addressed in the religious communities.
Did God’s grace and favor and healing extend to people outside of the official
religious communities of Judaism? And
would people outside of the communities of Judaism even know how to respond to
God grace and favor if they received it?
If you understand
these two questions, perhaps you can understand how the Gospel story functioned
when it was told and read in the early Christian communities.
What Jesus found
in the religion of his time was a religion that discriminated against people
who were “sick” as designated by religious establishment that dabbled in
medical definitions of disease in a way that Jesus found unacceptable. The official religion of his time also
excluded poor countryside folk and foreigners.
Within the Judaism
of his time there was a very well defined purity code that was practiced for
the “safety” of the community. People
who had certain diseases were quarantined from their communities until they
could be ritually cleared to be safe to appear in the general public. The lepers suffered from what we know today
as psoriasis or eczema and yet because of their appearance they were deemed
unworthy or infectious to the general community. One of the ten lepers who approached Jesus had a second
strike against him; he was also a Samaritan.
A Samaritan was something of a “mongrel” Israelite; Samaritans were
northern tribal Israelites who had entered into marriages with the Assyrians, a
conquering nation. They had even retained
a Torah based religion but they were not a pure ethnic group.
It is interesting
to note that the Samaritan leper was traveling with nine lepers from Judea . When one
shares a common crisis with other people, perhaps in a dire situation, one is
willing to forgo some basic biases and prejudices because one understands that the
hatred, fear and ignorance that drives victimization is essentially the same
whether one is talking about ethnic prejudice, prejudice against the impaired
or ill, or any other social group.
In this Gospel
story Jesus stands as the one who countered the religious authorities who were
upholding the rather irrational purity codes.
Jesus gave permission to the stranger and the social outcast to re-enter
the common community. Health is not just
about being cured of a disease; health is about having access to a significant
community of support and care.
There are non-believers
and skeptics today who will tell us that they are not Christians, because they
have found religious people and religious authority to be creating victims
rather than inviting people to the church as a significant community of support. And that criticism should cause all of us
some soul searching about the openness of our own hearts.
The nature of
Christ is to invite all people to fellowship and community. Many people understand religion to be like a
club that has rules to tell us who belongs and who doesn’t belong.
The Gospel of
Christ is preached today to tell us that all people belong equally in the
dignity of God. The Gospel is preached
so that the response of the Samaritan leper can be the true religious act of
all people.
The true religious
act of all people is to take time to say thanks to God for being included in
the wonderful family of God as sons and daughters of God and as brothers and
sisters of Christ.
We have accrued so
much baggage in how Christianity is practiced that we can easily forget how
simple and basic the Gospel is: Wherever
we are made to feel quarantined or isolated from community, Jesus stands as the
gate and the door to invite us to the community of God and to the community of
people who practice this ever generous invitation.
I do hope that we
will understand the mission of our parish is to practice this ever-generous
invitation of Christ to all persons into our midst.
If we can agree on
this, then all of the other details that constitute what it is to live together
in community will take secondary priority.
The generous
invitation of Jesus Christ should help us to give up all of the little purity
codes that we have learned in our society that keep us from offering friendship
to all people.
Let us be thankful
today that God is a God who invites all persons to know that they are in the
family of God.
And let us be a
friendly people who are committed to let everyone know about the generous,
winsome and loving invitation of God in Christ.
With the love of Christ we can celebrate our differences and overcome
the habits of victimization. By
welcoming all to the love of God, we can encourage all people to make the most
authentic religious act of worship of all, which is saying, “Thank you
God.” By the way, you do know what
Eucharist means? It means
“Thanksgiving.” Amen.
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